"On the contrary, I should love it! Would you like us to make the dress here? I would try it on, and like that we should be sure that it was right."
"How sweet you are! Plenty of other girls in your place would only trouble about themselves."
"Listen, supposing you wrote for the crêpe to be sent to-morrow." And then she added laughing, "M. de Bernès asked me yesterday evening if I had not any commissions for Pont-sur-Loire. I might have given him that to do!"
"He would have been slightly embarrassed."
"Why? It is easy enough to buy pink crêpe with a pattern."
Mère Rafut, who had been busy sewing, without uttering a word, but just pulling her needle through the work with a quick regular movement, now lifted her face, all wrinkled like an old apple, and remarked drily:
"And even without!"
"Without what?" asked Bijou.
"Without a pattern. Oh, no, it isn't he who'd be embarrassed! Why, he always helps to choose Mademoiselle Lisette Renaud's dresses."
"Lisette Renaud, the singer?" asked Jeanne eagerly, whilst Denyse, very much taken up with her work, did not appear to have heard.